INTERACTIVE AXIOM #4: Usability's Equivalent Exchange

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #4: Usability's Equivalent Exchange

THE EASIER YOU WISH TO MAKE IT FOR YOUR USER THE HARDER AND MORE EXPENSIVE IT WILL BE FOR YOU TO CREATE.

This is a natural law in Interactive development; an equivalent exchange.  And there is a point in the development of every project I have ever engaged in that this axiom hits the table.

It's ironic on some level that you, the developer and client, have to endure quite a lot of complexity, difficulty and cost - more than beginners initially expect -  to make the user's experience conversely simpler and more effortless.  But it's a fact.

That's because interactivity is not about a single path or way of doing things (though many clients walk in thinking it is).  It's about potentials and variables.  You are creating an environment where the User should have the freedom to move where he wishes.  This naturally imposes development of varied and redundant pathways and functions.  And the more options the User has, the more rigorous I.A. (information architecture) and U.I./U.X. (user interface/experience design) must become.

There are an infinite number of possible user behaviors - and the ideal interactive experience is going to adapt to each of these users uniquely.  But since such a thing is not possible, we must group users into psychographic buckets and design for these subsets of users in hopes that the rest of them will "figure it out".  And it is in this stage of development, when use-cases are being grouped, and project plans are being assembled, that this axiom is most relevant.

At least initially, interactive developers almost always overtly target "user friendliness"; I've never met a client or developer who doesn't pay lip service to this ideal.  In fact it is so much a basic part of interactive development that there isn't a participant in the development process, from client to end user, who hasn't heard the industry term "user-friendly".  But despite the terms ubiquity, actual follow-through on this ideal is often compromised when cost and timing are factored in.

This axiom dominoes into the 1st axiom all the time.  This is when, at the start of a project, there are big claims about how "easy we want this function to be" for the user, only to choke at the numbers when the cost and schedule are realized.  More often than not, in an effort to reduce development difficulty and cost, smart use-case solutions are cut.

For example, users of shopping sites fall into some well-known groups (and some not so well-known) that shop differently.  Some users know what they want, others browse (in numerous preferred ways), others still like to customize, and so on.  Building a system that will allow each of these customers to self-select and follow their preferred path effortlessly often results in multiple ways of accessing the same information.  And as I say, this is where the bean counting takes a toll.  Faced with building what seems to be costly redundancy, many clients and developers will rather shoehorn some of those users into a single path - rather than incur the cost of true "user friendliness".

Look, I'm not totally idealistic, projects have to be profitable - so tough decisions have to be made.

This axiom is more about avoiding the shock of it.  It's about setting expectations - with yourself, your CFO, or your client.  Just don't be surprised, when you've stressed user-friendliness (and you should!), that your experienced agency shows you a budget that is higher, and a schedule that is longer, than you'd hoped.It really does take longer and cost more. 

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #3 : Embrace The Limitations

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #3 : Embrace The Limitations

EMBRACE THE LIMITATIONS OF THE TECHNOLOGY

Arguably more commandment than axiom, this was, and still is, the most often repeated, most useful, and most practical axiom to come out of my years in interactive development. One might’ve called it “Embrace the way of the medium” but that does not honor the challenge in interactive where the technology - the very medium itself - constantly changes.

Embracing the limitations of the technology - as a fundamental part of your creative concept and execution - will make your work look, behave, and function better than the vast majority of the world's web sites, apps and other digital executions.

It requires that you follow these basic steps:

a.  Set the Bar High

Before you even begin approaching development, you must first prepare to judge your eventual work, your project, with a high, medium-agnostic, qualitative bias.  You must demand and expect intentional grace, beauty, and perfection in the work that manifests through it, regardless of the medium it exists in.

You must never, NEVER, offer up the technology as an excuse for less than intended perfection.  I often hear my contemporaries saying "Check it out, that's pretty good for the web!"  Such a forgiving qualifier as "…good for the web" was never tolerated by Red Sky creative directors.  Either it was excellent, relative to the best work anyone could find in any medium, or it was bad.  The medium's unique weaknesses had to be irrelevant when judging a project's quality.  If the work didn't present itself with medium agnostic perfection, it was considered flawed.  That's a damn high bar today.  And I can tell you it was a damned higher bar in the 90s.  I still encourage my creative teams to work in other mediums every chance they get.  Among other things, it keeps you objective.  Keeps you from falling into the excuse trap.

b.  Identify the Limitations

As project concepting is about to begin, you must first fully understand, internalize and accept the technology's strengths and weaknesses.  And don't be fooled, identifying technical strengths Vs. weaknesses is a tricky art-form itself.  One must go to great effort to distinguish between mere capabilities and strengths.  Often the developers of a new technology will be quite excited by aspects of their new updates and tools. And if you are correctly approaching this evaluation with your medium-agnostic glasses on, you will - rather often - not be as excited by it yourself.  Creators of the new tool will hyperventilate that it does X, Y and Z.  But you then must decide that it does X well, but actually does Y and Z rather poorly.  This is a difficult discipline to learn.  It's so easy to get caught up in the hype and novelty of some new function or feature.  Weak creative teams jump on these new updates and technologies because it seems novel, exciting and fresh.  But this is a junior mistake.  Your concept must be exciting and fresh, and technology is irrelevant there.  

(Related Axiom: Don't mistake technical advancement for creative solutions)

To facilitate this step at Red Sky the creatives and engineers (teams that critically shared a common language, having worked together on many projects previously - this is key) would often sit down before project work was to begin, solely to explore the technical landscape in detail.  These were a dialogue between the creatives and the engineers that would typically start with the engineers showing freshly researched tools and features that they thought were exciting and relevant, and the creatives asking a lot of questions aimed at finding the stress points.  These questions would usually result in the engineers having to do some digging - some testing of the tools - to find where the tools would choke.  Naturally this is how we identified the current state of LIMITATION relative to our creative process.  As a result of these regular sessions Red Sky's creatives typically had a better grasp of the technology than their creative contemporaries.  Where some perhaps didn't code, they at least had a solid gut understanding of the tech that made them easy for engineers to work with at this stage.

Incidentally these in-house sessions were one of the reasons Red Sky utterly ate the lunch of ad agencies who ventured into interactive advertising at the time.  Big Ad Agencies were (and most still are!) loathe to hire significant teams of broadly skilled engineers - engineers who don't just work in Flash, say.  This aversion to investment in ongoing in-house technical research and development is really the worst position one can take where the technology - the very medium - is a constantly flowing river of "change".  Preferring to outsource development, the big ad agencies rarely manage to embrace the limitations effectively, because they don't live with them.  They don't understand them.  They aren't current.

c.  Develop A Concept That Behaves The Way The Technology Does

With the limitations of the technology solidly identified and internalized, you can begin concepting.  Every creative has an internal set of filters that tells him/her whether an idea is a good one or not.  Now knowledge of those technical limitations and strengths must layer onto the creative's filter stack.  If in concepting, the creative team utilizes this knowledge, the final piece will be gorgeous.  It's almost impossible for it not to be.

More often, in teams where this process is not practiced (and sadly, that is most of what's out there), you will see oh so common markings.  You will see the clear effect of technology that is working too hard to do things it doesn't do well.  Long load times, jerky animation, slow frame-rates, ambitious gymnastic interfaces that don't behave well, items that stutter and pop on screen in unintended ways, laggy response to interaction, generally poor behavior.

Embracing the limitations of the technology means that none of this will happen (except through anomaly).  The piece will move smoothly, gracefully, and it will be responsive.  Frame rates will never be an issue, they will run at appropriate speeds and the effect will be smooth.  Any weaknesses in the technology will not reveal themselves.

Here is a very simplistic, literal example.Let's compare two different solutions where dynamic text is in motion.The junior creative imagines some sophisticated, full screen motion graphic - like something you'd see on TV.  Sounds exciting and cool.  The concept art looks killer, it's beautiful. In production, each discrete frame looks lovely.  The engineers and production artists optimize as much as they can, but there is only so much they can do. The concept demands the movement of a lot of pixels.  And then it gets implemented.  The piece loads slowly.  The motion is broad and complicated, and it's running in a browser so it quickly chokes the standard PC system resulting in a frame rate of maybe 10 or 12 frames per second (FPS).  The animation therefor appears jittery and staccato - common for the web, but not the smooth, graceful effect the creative had designed.  If this animation instance was airing on TV you would assume it was animated by someone with limited skill.

On the other hand, the team that understands the limitations came upon a concept that requires text to be displayed as though it was a neon sign.  This art too is beautiful.  It's also full-screen.  It's photo-real, and once animated the neon pops on and off in a choreographed sequence. One of the letters is even "damaged" and realistically flickers as the neon goes through its cycle.  In this case the frame rate selected was 8 frames per second, but you had no idea.  Neon behaves naturally at 8 FPS.  The team chose that frame rate, but could have chosen a faster one.  They just didn't need to because the concept worked hand-in-hand with the limitations.Basically the weakness in the technology is invisible because it doesn't show through the content.

Don't let this simple example deceive you.  This axiom works - no matter how sophisticated and powerful your tools are.You may have realized as I did, that really, it's not so much about merely embracing limitations - only the negative - as it is embracing the full, true condition.  Strengths as well as weaknesses.  But I have found that developers have very little trouble embracing technical strengths.  That all too often we do that to a fault as we will embrace all advertised features, strong or weak, as strengths.  When that happens we are rather embracing the promise of the tool - as opposed to it's actual state.  So I have found that focusing this axiom on the limitations ultimately results in better work.

Lastly - this axiom is unique among my other axioms in that it can be applied to virtually all aspects of development. And maybe I'm taking it too far - but "Embrace the Limitations" can even be applied to any aspect of one's life and work.  I have no doubt there is some Zen teaching that puts this axiom to shame where living one's life is concerned - but it continues to inspire me to problem solve in all aspects of my life none-the-less.

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #2: The Interactive Trade Agreement

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #2: The Interactive Trade Agreement

EVERY INTERACTIVE CONSTRUCT MUST PROVIDE REIMBURSEMENT OF VALUE EQUAL TO, OR IN EXCESS OF, THE USER’S SELF-APPRAISED INVESTMENT OF TIME, ATTENTION AND EFFORT OF ACTION.

All the rules of economics apply to this system- though nothing physical is exchanged. In this economic exchange the User must perceive being the inordinate beneficiary, where time, attention and action are His currency.  Whereas, promise and (not "or") payoff of value are the currency of the Interactive content creator.

Ultimately value - and not the communication of value - is the light that attracts the moths in this system.

Some of you are thinking this is obvious.  And yet, all too often, more often than not, advertisers do not demonstrate such an understanding.  How often are we asked to "register" before gaining access to content of undisclosed value?  How often does a click on a banner ad result in redirection to more marketing messaging?  How often does "Click Here" reside, where rather, something wonderful that creates a sense of curiosity should?

This axiom operates both at the macro and the micro.  On the one hand it is the foundation of an ongoing relationship with the user, and on the other it drives every unique rollover and click.

Every click or interaction represents a User's investment- a prepayment that is based on a perceived promise, and must be rewarded with a payoff.

Not a tagline, a payoff. Failure to pay off every such prepayment is akin to thievery.  No wonder users are so skeptical of most online advertising.

BRANDING THE PROMISE

Have you ever wondered why, on the one hand, visitors to Disneyland will go to such great personal cost to get to the theme park, and wait in line for up to 3 hours or more to experience a 4 minute ride?  And further, why these same humans won't give your proposition so much as a click?

Disney has done an excellent job branding their promise.  They have consistently (not occasionally, or once) paid off the "users'" prepayment with inordinate value.  Consistently, the pay off at the end of the line was "worth it".  Thus the willingness to prepay again.

What is the pay off at the end of your click?  And at a higher level, what is the payoff at the end of all your clicks?  Do you pay off with inordinate value?  Do you even think in those terms?   If you do pay off, have you done it consistently for years, and plan on continuing for many more?

There is an opportunity for every brand out there that is willing to make a commitment to paying off every marketing based click- for years to come.  Should a brand take such a stance, it will be rewarded with a huge and consistent user response.  Users will come to trust the brand. They'll know that when that brand says "click here" it's worth it.  More specifically, they will come to trust the marketing.  They will seek the marketing out.  They will go to great effort to find that button to click.

One of the admitted issues here, is that advertising tends not to work that way.  Campaigns are changed quarterly, or more frequently, few in the advertising industry contemplate multi-year initiatives.

And yet.  That's what is required. In order to brand the promise of your brand.  Got it?

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #1: The Grand Interactive Order

INTERACTIVE AXIOM #1: The Grand Interactive Order

THE USER IS YOUR KING.  YOU ARE THE SUBJECT.

Like it or not the User is in control. The User is the ultimate master. The User is King.

Those of us who create interactive experiences must accept our lowly positions in the Grand Interactive Order, serving, amusing, and satisfying; ready and able to wield every ton of technical prowess and creative ingenuity we can muster to completely conform to each user’s unique interest, desire, whim and disposition. To delight the user when she grows bored. To shuttle the user to the very thing she needs or wants instantly- with nary a second spent indulging interests of our own. Don't bow to this Axiom, and you will fail...

No matter where you sit on the Interactive Content Creator’s side of the table, be you a writer, programmer, advertiser, financier, artist, producer, or huge, really important fortune 500 client who receives deep, humble, bowing greetings from your ad agencies; it doesn’t matter- you beggingly serve the User. You serve your King before all else.

This fact is well understood in certain circles.Entrepreneurs, video game developers, film-makers, writers, product developers, inventors – anyone whose customer is the general public, they tend to understand this rule – even if they don’t fully grasp it’s primal gravity in the Interactive space.

In my experience, the least versed, of course, are advertisers and marketers. For reasons that go to the heart of advertising’s very existance, this mammoth industry struggles to comprehend this most basic of constructs; unthinkingly breaking the rule with virtually every execution.

The servant who commits the sin of indulging himself, of misdirecting the King even for an instant to satisfy his own “business objectives” or “marketing plan”, spends that instant in polar opposition to the Masters’ interests.

It’s simple, don’t do what the Master wants, and your user will simply dismiss you and choose the next servant in line, hoping that this plebe will recognize his true place in the unspoken pact of the Grand Interactive Order.  Interactive Developers and Marketers are servants, jesters, and monkeys performing for change.

We may have no pride or motivation of our own unless we are willing to narrow our Users’ embrace.

Take the classic example of a DVD.  Do you remember those? If you ever used one you had this experience - you insert the DVD, you sit with the remote waiting for the start of the movie, then, uninvited, an FBI Warning appears.  You hit the "skip" button.  ...and nothing happens.  You hit it again to discover that your skip functionality has been silently disabled, forcing you to sit through the entirety of the static segment.  It's happened to you dozens of times, and yet I'm sure we'll agree, it nevertheless has the effect of raising your blood pressure.  That's because the 1st Axiom was broken.  You sit there with the unspoken promise of control - and yet that control was wrested away from you - that promise was broken - broken by your servant.  You, the King, were denied, you were forced to submit, to mutedly concede.  And no, yelling at the screen doesn't count.  Though it's what I do.

 I do the same thing today when YouTube shows the utter audacity to trial those un-skippable ads. And sometimes they try to post more than one.

If get annoyed at Youtube when that happens you are right to feel that way. It’s the correct feeling.

Because YouTube has broken this first rule of interactive.

While the feeling is fresh, I would encourage every content developer to consider what promises of control you have broken with your audiences.

The biggest problem with conventional interactive content, the reason that so few interactive pieces satisfy their users and thus ultimately fail to meet business objectives, is that content-creators unthinkingly break this rule every day. Every banner ad, every interstitial, every linear intro, every presumptive registration page, slow download, low resolution video clip, cookie request, pop-up newsletter ad, virtually everything that we regularly hear users complain about are immediately traceable to a breaking of the Grand Interactive Order. For each of these, in one form or another, represents an action or admission the user must make to conform to the Developer, the Content Creator. And this is the opposite of Interactive truth.

Further, every disruption to the Grand Interactive Order typically falls into one of two categories:

• Those that demonstrate that the developer is selfish, too directive or self-indulgent. This is commonly the result of traditional, interruptive advertising tactics like banner ads, interstitials, etc. and all ranges of registration barriers, or

• Those that demonstrate that the developer is weak. Often through experiences marked by low technical quality, poor design and poorly engineered systems resulting in slow processing, slow downloads, poor resolution, confusion etc. Or related, those that demonstrate that the developer is cheap, as through low economic investment resulting in limited user options and insufficient depth and breadth.

As you will hear me repeat in future axiom posts, any of my axioms may be broken- even the Grand Interactive Order- but one must know when one is breaking a rule- especially one as fundamental as this. In this instance, a developer must seek out ways of achieving his objectives even as he pays respect to the developer's natural, subservient position. Far too few developers acknowledge, let alone respect, the Grand Interactive Order, a mistake that has become the greatest single offender, under the developers' control, in negatively impacting the using-audiences' embrace of the Interactive medium at large.